Popular Categories

Adaptive mobility equipment

It’s that time of year, the season of commencement ceremonies, and each year we hear words of inspiration and hope from podiums all over the country.
But here at Rifton, because we make a gait trainer, we hear remarkable stories of perseverance, of high school kids whose lives have been upended by injury but resolve to walk across the stage to receive their diploma. This year is no different,...

The Rifton TRAM is a great addition to our skilled rehabilitation department, especially for those patients with neurological deficits. One therapist can safely assist a patient in the TRAM through a functional mobility progression starting with sitting balance on the edge of the bed, standing tolerance, posture and then gait normalization. In the past, many of these therapeutic activities needed...

Gait training is a fundamental intervention in pediatric rehabilitation. At present, over-ground assistive devices and treadmills dominate the field, but we’re now seeing emerging robotic technologies that offer solutions to normalize and enhance the quality of gait mainly through the application of motor learning principles and the use of dynamic weight-bearing systems. We need to learn more about...

I purchased my Rifton Pacer in the fall of 2014 and it’s been one of the best purchases I ever made. I’d like to tell you about it. But I need to go back to December 2010 when my health problems began. First there was poor vision and drooping on one side of my face. Balance and speech difficulties came next. The symptoms progressively worsened until I was left with a paralyzed face and unable...

A few years ago we welcomed a non-traditional student—we’ll call him Jay—at Lincoln Developmental Center (LDC) where we work. Most of our students have had a development disorder since birth; most are undersized and fit well into traditional equipment, but Jay sustained a traumatic brain injury at the age of 14 and arrived at LDC at the age of 17, fully grown, with limited positioning...

The receding snow banks are creating inviting sidewalks, and which kid’s first response is not “where’s my bike?” Children with physical disabilities want to ride just as much as any child, and they should. Sadly, adaptive trikes are far too rarely covered by Medicaid or insurance, even with a strong case for the therapeutic benefits of cycling.
Thankfully, there is a growing...

As professionals who have worked with children with poor motor control, we have no doubt about the importance of a gait trainer. Using gait trainers for upright positioning and ambulation practice for children unable to walk independently has been a long-standing intervention in clinics, schools and homes. But we’ve all lamented the dearth of solid clinical research to support what we’ve...

Therapists who use the Pacer gait trainer with more than one client know how important it is to replicate the same settings and positioning each time. But since each user requires different settings, it’s easy to forget from client to client and miss out an important adjustment or prompt. The staff at MOVE have devised a handy checklist to prevent this. We’ve taken their form and reorganized...

Chilly winter days are here to stay for a while (at least in upstate New York). But that doesn’t mean you need to put your Rifton adaptive trike in storage until spring. Frequent requests from parents and therapists prompted us to design a simple stationary stand to enable a continuum of trike therapy and exercise, indoors as well as outside.
When placed on its stationary stand, the adaptive...

ABC’s Dancing with the Stars gets great ratings, and it’s even entertaining at times, but nothing compares to the stars at the Center for Disability Services in Albany, New York. Paired with professional dancers, these performers make their way across the stage in Pacer gait trainers and Activity chairs in a showcase of music, dance and artistic expression.
Support from The Arts Center of...